Did Newly Announced Top Afghan General Run ‘Cheney’s Assassination Wing’, Cover Up Tillman Murder?

It was reported on Tuesday that Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal will be taking over command of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, pending Senate approval.

McChrystal is presently director of the Joint Chiefs staff, but from September 2003 to August 2008, he headed the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which oversees such elite units as the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy SEALs.

Famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh recently described the JSOC as an “executive assassination wing” controlled for many years by the office of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Speaking to a University of Minnesota audience in March, Hersh called JSOC “a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. … They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. … Congress has no oversight of it. … It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on.” >>>

President Barack Obama’s new choice to lead U.S. operations in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, suspected that former football star Pat Tillman had been killed by friendly fire but approved a Silver Star regardless.

According to military testimony acquired by the Associated Press in 2007, McChrystal went so far as to warn top U.S. generals that Tillman’s death was suspicious. In the memo, he implored “our nation’s leaders,” specifically “POTUS” — the President of the United States — “to avoid using the award citation’s language of “devastating enemy fire” in their speeches.”

McChrystal himself had signed off on the award.

Ultimately, the Pentagon’s acting inspector general said McChrystal should be held “accountable for the inaccurate and misleading assertions” in his Silver Star award recommendation and for failing to notify officials of his suspicions. >>>